"I mean, if I were pretty. This everlasting adulation is insulting."
"Mr. Morton doesn't flatter," said Mrs. Bowen thoughtfully, turning the feather screen she held at her face, now edgewise, now flatwise, toward Colville.
"Oh no," owned Miss Graham. "He's a clergyman."
Mrs Bowen addressed herself to Colville. "You must go to hear him some day. He's very interesting, if you don't mind his being rather Low Church."
Colville was going to pretend to an advanced degree of ritualism; but it occurred to him that it might be a serious matter to Mrs. Bowen, and he asked instead who was the Rev. Mr. Waters.
"Oh, isn't he lovely?" cried Miss Graham. "There, Mrs. Bowen! Mr. Waters's manner is what I call truly complimentary. He always talks to you as if he expected you to be interested in serious matters, and as if you were his intellectual equal. And he's so happy here in Florence! He gives you the impression of feeling every breath he breathes here a privilege. You ought to hear him talk about Savonarola, Mr. Colville."
"Well," said Colville, "I've heard a great many people talk about Savonarola, and I'm rather glad he talked to me about American girls."
"American girls!" uttered Miss Graham, in a little scream. "Did Mr. Waters talk to you about girls?"
"Yes. Why not? He was probably in love with one once."
"Mr. Waters?" cried the girl. "What nonsense!"
"Well, then, with some old lady. Would you like that better?"
Miss Graham looked at Mrs. Bowen for permission, as it seemed, and then laughed, but did not attempt any reply to Colville.
"You find even that incredible of such pyramidal antiquity," he resumed. "Well, it is hard to believe. I told him what that German said, and we agreed beautifully about another type of American girl which we said we preferred."
"Oh! What could it be?" demanded Miss Graham.
"Ah, it wouldn't be so easy to say right off-hand," answered Colville indolently.
Mrs. Bowen put her hand under the elbow of the arm holding her screen. "I don't believe I should agree with you so well," she said, apparently with a sort of didactic intention.
They entered into a discussion which is always fruitful with Americans—the discussion of American girlhood, and Colville contended for the old national ideal of girlish liberty as wide as the continent, as fast as the Mississippi. Mrs. Bowen withstood him with delicate firmness. "Oh," he said, "you're Europeanised."
"I certainly prefer the European plan of bringing up girls," she replied steadfastly. "I shouldn't think of letting a daughter of mine have the freedom I had."
"Well, perhaps it will come right in the next generation, then; she will let her daughter have the freedom she hadn't."
"Not if I'm alive to prevent it," cried Mrs. Bowen.
Colville laughed. "Which plan do you prefer, Miss Graham?"
"I don't think it's quite the same now as it used to be," answered the girl evasively.
"Well, then, all I can say is that if I had died before this chance, I had lived a blessed time. I perceive more and more that I'm obsolete. I'm in my dotage; I prattle of the good old times, and the new spirit of the age flouts me. Miss Effie, do you prefer the Amer——"
"No, thank you," said her mother quickly.
"Effie is out of the question. It's time you were in bed, Effie."
The child came with instant submissiveness and kissed her mother good-night; she kissed Miss Graham, and gave her hand to Colville. He held it a moment, letting her pull shyly away from him, while he lolled back in his chair, and laughed at her with his sad eyes. "It's past the time I should be in bed, my dear, and I'm sitting up merely because there's nobody to send me. It's not that I'm really such a very bad boy. Good night. Don't put me into a disagreeable dream; put me into a nice one." The child bridled at the mild pleasantry, and when Colville released her hand she suddenly stooped forward and kissed him.
"You're so funny!" she cried, and ran and escaped beyond the portière.
Mrs. Bowen stared in the same direction, but not with severity. "Really, Effie has been carried a little beyond herself."
"Well," said Colville, "that's one conquest since I came to Florence. And merely by being funny! When I was in Florence before, Mrs. used to go about quite freely with either of them. They were both very pretty, and we were all very young. Don't you think it was charming?" Mrs. Bowen coloured a lovely red, and smiled, but made no other response. "Florence has changed very much for the worse since that time. There used to be a pretty flower-girl, with a wide-flapping straw hat, who flung a heavy bough full of roses into my lap when she met me driving across the Carraja bridge. I spent an hour looking for that girl to-day, and couldn't find her. The only flower-girl I could find was a fat one of fifty, who kept me fifteen minutes in Via Tornabuoni while she was fumbling away at my button-hole, trying to poke three second-hand violets and a sickly daisy into it. Ah, youth! youth! I suppose a young fellow could have found that other flower-girl at a glance; but my old eyes! No, we belong, each of us, to our own generation. Mrs. Bowen," he said, with a touch of tragedy—whether real or affected, he did not well know himself—in his hardiness, "what has become of Mrs. Pilsbury?"
"Mrs. Milbury, you mean?" gasped Mrs. Bowen, in affright at his boldness.
"Milbury, Bilbury, Pilsbury—it's all one, so long as it isn't——"
"They're living in Chicago!" she hastened to reply, as if she were afraid he was going to say, "so long as it isn't Colville," and she could not have borne that.
Colville clasped his hands at the back of his head and looked at Mrs. Bowen with eyes that let her know that he was perfectly aware she had been telling Miss Graham of his youthful romance, and that he had now touched it purposely. "And you wouldn't," he said, as if that were quite relevant to what they had been talking about—"you wouldn't let Miss Graham go out walking alone with a dotard like me?"
"Certainly not," said Mrs. Bowen.
Colville got to his feet by a surprising activity. "Good-bye, Miss Graham." He offered his hand to her with burlesque despair, and then turned to Mrs. Bowen. "Thank you for such a pleasant evening! What was your day, did you say?"
"Oh, any day!" said Mrs. Bowen cordially, giving her hand.
"Do you know whom you look like?" he asked, holding it.
"No."
"Lina Ridgely."
The ladies stirred softly in their draperies after he was gone. They turned and faced the hearth, where a log burned in a bed of hot ashes, softly purring and ticking to itself, and whilst they stood pressing their hands against the warm fronts of their dresses, as the fashion of women is before a fire, the clock on the mantel began to strike twelve.
"Was that her name?" asked Miss Graham, when the clock had had its say. "Lina Ridgely?"
"No; that was my name," answered Mrs. Bowen.
"Oh yes!" murmured the young girl apologetically.
"She led him on; she certainly encouraged him. It was shocking. He was quite wild about it."
"She must have been a cruel girl. How could he speak of it so lightly?"
"It was best to speak of it, and have done with it," said Mrs. Bowen. "He knew that I must have been telling you something about it."
"Yes. How bold it was! A young man couldn't have done it! Yes, he's fascinating. But how old and sad he looked, as he lay back there in the chair!"
"Old? I don't think he looked old. He looked sad. Yes, it's left its mark on him."
The log burned